Category Archives: Social Marketing

Recently I have been listening to Michael Stelzner’s Social Media Marketing Podcasts via Social Media Examiner and have both learned a lot and enjoyed Michael’s style.

He tends towards NOT over-complicating what businesses should be doing to effectuvely leverage social media platforms for marketing communications (MarComm) and customer relationship marketing (CRM), which I appreciate. The periodic doses of humor Michael injects into his podcasts make them a resource that I continue to use and sometimes listen to more than once.

Shown below, I have displayed the latest blog post from Social Media Examiner that describes and provides access to Michael’s podcasts for ADM Professional Community members to take advantage of and try out…

More and more I am finding that there are great resources for sparking innovation within the auto industry that are available from outside of the automotive specific vertical… Learning what works for other retailers and businesses can be a great source of inspiration for those of us who specialize in automotive marketing.

Selling With Social Media: A New Direction for Businesses

To learn about why you need to rethink the dealership showroom sales process in this social age, listen to this interview with Tom Martin for the Social Media Marketing podcast.

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner designed to help busy automotive marketers and dealership owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, listen to an interview with Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale: How to Build a Digitally Powered Marketing and Sales System to Better Prospect, Qualify and Close Leads. His agency is Converse Digital. Tom shares the concept of painless prospecting and propinquity.

You’ll learn how to succeed in the changing social media sales landscape, and how your business can embrace these new strategies.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Tom believes success is more about how buyers buy than the way dealerships and businesses want to sell. With the Internet, people can hide behind the anonymity of Google search.

You can do all your pre-purchase research without having to talk to a salesperson. You only have to talk to a person once you’ve made a short list of car dealerships you are interested in and want to test drive the vehicle before closing the deal.

Buyers use Google search for pre-purchase research.

Today’s buyer prefers this process, as it’s easier and more efficient. With this in mind, companies have to adjust.

In the early days, the power was with the salesperson, but with the knowledge available online today, the power is in the hands of the consumer.

Tom says as a business, you have to stop thinking about how you sell because you don’t really sell anymore. Instead you help buyers make a buying decision. When they make their decision, hopefully it will be in your favor. Although it won’t always be the case.

You’ll discover how your system needs to be set up properly and the approach you need to consider.

If you have a really good product or service, more often than not, you will win the conversion. Most people are turned off by people selling to them. The best way is to show them that you’re willing to help and that you always have their best interests at heart.

Listen to the show to find out more about how the approach to sales has changed.

An example of a business that has embraced new ways to sell

Tom talks about a camera store called Adorama based in New York that he used as a case study in his book, The Invisible Sale. Adorama only has one store, but does business in all 50 US states and 5 countries.

The camera store Adorama is used as a case study in The Invisible Sale.

Adorama has two sides to their business, B2C and B2B. Regardless of which side you look at, they approach it the same way. Their philosophy is to sell by sharing original educational content.

Even though it’s a photography store, they sell more than just cameras. They’ve built a Learning Center that includes Adorama TV, which is one of their huge content pieces. The Learning Center is a treasure trove of educational content.

There is everything from learning how to shoot a photo to discovering the best equipment.

Although their approach is to educate, when you watch one of their videos, you’ll notice easy-to-follow links to products below the video. You’ll find out how they used YouTube to allow people to reach that product.

Products mentioned throughout Adorama’s videos are linked for easy access.

In 2010, they saw a general growth curve, mainly due to the educational content they provide.

The moral of the lesson is that if you can make your buyer smarter and better because they are doing business with you, then Tom believes you will succeed in selling more to that buyer.

Listen to the show to hear why Tom relates it to fly-fishing and how it’s the same with modern content marketing.

What is a social agent and why is it important?

Tom describes a social agent as someone who doesn’t necessarily buy from you, but recommends you to a friend or colleague who might buy from you. A lot of the time, social agents can be your most valuable customers that you never do business with. They’re the best customers you’ll have.

You need to draw in your social agents through educational pieces. A relationship is formed with your brand or company when they see value in what you are doing. You’ll learn how Tom became a huge social agent for Adorama.

Listen to the show to find out the importance of empowering everyone to be a social agent for your company.

In The Invisible Sale, you reveal a process that helps people sell without cold-calling and advertising. Can you explain the process?

Tom calls the process “painless prospecting.” The concept is a spin on inbound marketing. The core difference is that most content and inbound strategies leverage search and keyword optimization.

As more and more businesses discover and deploy keyword optimization and SEO strategies, Tom believes that only so many will win the battle. It’s going to get more competitive and much more difficult.

Propinquity is a scientific theory that powers the formation of relationships. It says that if you bump into someone a lot, the higher the likelihood of you touching them more often, reading their content or meeting them in person, the more likely you are to like that person, providing you like them each time you meet.

You need to build your dealership success on the concept of propinquity.

Tom’s painless prospecting philosophy is that you don’t walk away from SEO, but do get off your own blog.

You need to think and care more about putting great content on other people’s blogs. Tom advises you to treat every blog as your own. When you put content in these places, they are called Propinquity Points.

You’ll learn how to develop a strategy for this to make sure you stay top of mind.

Tom shares a quick overview of where you can find places to provide content, but there is a whole chapter (Building a Painless Prospecting Platform) in his book where the process is laid out.

Check out the chapter on Building a Painless Prospecting Platform.

If you pay attention to what is written by auto industry experts or your OEM you can usually sit down and list all the places that your prospective customers congregate online and offline. You’ll learn where these places might be. If you know the auto industry well enough, you will already know of 7-10 places without thinking. This is your first list.

You’ll discover how social listening software such as Radian6 or Sysomos can be beneficial to finding propinquity points for you.

Sysomos can help you find propinquity points for your business.

Once you find these points, you can create more opportunities for people to stumble across you and your brand. It’s a great way to get a good positive impression.

When you get off your own blog, your buyer doesn’t have to be in active research mode to stumble upon you. They might then click through to your blog and possibly sign up to read it. You’ll learn what can happen if you only stay on your own blog.

You could have people sign up to your blog who weren’t in active research mode.

You’ll discover why you do your best content work when you write for someone else.

Tom advises you to write 4 or 5 posts for other blogs, staged over a 2-week period and keep an eye on your Google Analytics to see what happens. You’ll notice that you drive more traffic back to your site.

The more you write for these larger audiences, the bigger your chance of people coming over to your site to check out your content. For every 100 people who read your content somewhere else, around 5% will convert to signups. This is how to build propinquity at a blog base.

Tom is convinced that the way to win today is to get out there and treat yourself like a media empire.

Listen to the show to learn about the invisible component in Tom’s book title.

What automotive marketers should avoid when using content to drive sales

Tom says there are two things automotive marketers should avoid. Most dealership marketing managers produce content at the wrong level. It’s normally the same single unit of content across their blog and podcast. So most feel that one blog post a week is enough without writing for others.

First you have to think about content creation as an ecosystem. You should never create one piece of content once. You should look for ways to repurpose it or even rechannel it.

Make sure you repurpose your blog content.

You’ll learn about the ways you can turn one piece of content into more content.

Secondly, Tom states that there is a belief, especially among inbounders, that every piece of content needs to have a call to action. Although research proves calls to action get more conversions, Tom doesn’t really believe it. He feels there is still value in pure education.

You need to go out and educate your buyer. Don’t ask or expect anything in return. Tom states that most buyers know how to buy; you shouldn’t need to rely on a call to action for them to have enough confidence to contact you.

Listen to the show to find out why your content should always be of value.

This Week’s Social Media Question

“As an artist, sometimes it will take years between contacting potential collectors and receiving a commission or a purchase. Are there specific social media tools that can be used to help develop, encourage and maintain these long-term relationships, so that the leads don’t go cold and people will recommend you to their friends, when at times they are not necessarily looking to buy themselves?” — DebKArt.

This is a great question on how to keep top of mind with prospects who aren’t ready to buy.

The first thing I would recommend is to make sure you listen to this particular podcast for some great ideas. Here are a few examples of what you could do with your business.

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

Create time-lapse videos that showcase your processes

Create educational pieces

Become the conduit to prospects

When you put yourself in the position of the resource person rather than the salesperson, every time you communicate with prospects, it’s a way to stay top of mind. If, and when, they are ready to buy, they are more likely to come back to you or pass your details on to another prospect. You need to have regular touch points.

You’ll hear an example of what I received from people in the voice talent industry when I was a prospect and how my realtor markets his business using social media.

I hope you find this helpful. Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Facebook Post Timing: Which Days of the Week Have the Best Engagement Rate Potential for Automotive Marketers?

Car Dealers and Automotive Marketing Professionals are less likely to post on Facebook on the weekend, and that seems like it might be a good decision, according to new study from Socialbakers…

The research is based on an analysis of almost 2.9 million Facebook posts from 23,000 business and brand pages over a 2-month period. The researchers looked at the percentage of posts that were created on each day of the week, then looked at each day’s “engagement rate potential.”

Here’s how the researchers determined engagement rate potential (contrary to some press reports, the figures do not reflect actual engagement rates):

“Socialbakers first looked at the 4,000 most engaging posts from the analyzed sample. Then, to calculate Monday’s engagement rate potential, for example, they calculated the number of those top posts that were created on a Monday and then divided that number by the total number of posts published on Mondays. They repeated that calculation for each day of the week, and then made the resulting percentages relative to each other. (In so doing, they controlled for the variances in number of posts created on each day of the week.)”

Monday emerges as the best performer, with its relative percentage at 7.1%. What that means, then, is that posts created on Monday were 7.1% more likely to rank among the top posts than the average post created on any single day. (Alternatively: the share of posts created on Mondays making it into the top posts by engagement rate was 7.1% higher than the overall share.) By contrast, Saturday (-12.1%) and Sunday (-5.3%) were the worst performers.

So are automotive consumers less engaged on the weekend? Or is it that dealers and their social media marketing service providers are not only posting less on the weekends, but are also updating less engaging content?

While it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions from the data, the study provides an interesting glimpse into potential opportunities. It also raises other questions, too: Are car dealers, businesses and brands not exploiting opportunities on the weekend, or are they right to be focusing more on posting during the week?

In an earlier study that looked at Twitter, Socialbakers found that Saturdays had the highest relative engagement rate (engagement rate relative to entire sample of tweets). Last year, research from Buddy Media indicated that brands’ tweets enjoyed higher engagement rates on the weekend.

It’s worth noting that the researchers do offer the requisite disclaimers: results likely differ by industry, market, nature of product or service, audience demographics, and season of the year. (The same caution needs to be applied to questions of email timing.)

How MySpace Started Its Rebirth by Alienating Its Most Loyal Customers

MySpace was, in many people’s opinion, the social network to be on for many years. In fact, in 2006, MySpace surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. The decline of MySpace began in 2008 as Facebook rose in popularity and became the newest social network of preference for many. MySpace’s user base has since declined from a peak user base of 125 million to its present day membership (as of June 2013) of 25 million. In 2011, a group which included singer Justin Timberlake, purchased MySpace and they vowed to revive the network.

MySpace has been focusing on attracting business presence and musical talent in addition to revamping the look and feel of their site. It appears that in order to achieve their goal, they felt it was necessary to delete “user blogs which had been maintained for upwards of six or more years,” according to this recent article in SocialNewsDaily.

While many users abandoned MySpace in the mass exodus that occurred between 2008 until now, these users remained loyal and continued to visit and use the site to record and share their daily thoughts and activities. This of course angered those fans that remained loyal; not just because of the loss of six or more years of their digital life; (which some users maintain as sort of a digital diary) but because they felt as if they are unimportant to the site they remained loyal to.

As one user wrote, “You have stolen six years of blogs and something that is priceless to me and cannot be replaced.”

MySpace has a long way to go and a definite uphill battle in its attempt to gain back market share and attention away from other more popular sites. By alienating their most loyal customers and deleting their loyal user’s content, they may have taken a huge step backwards. Big business and music talent certainly want publicity but what good is a social network that has no audience?

While MySpace may yet have to acquiesce and restore the blogs of their customers, they did at least recognize the importance of their customer base, even if only in words, when they made the following statement:

“Change isn’t easy and there has been a lot going on lately. We understand that this information is very important to you. Please understand that your blogs have not been deleted. Your content is safe and we have been discussing the best ways possible to provide you your blogs.”

The point is that loyal customers are the foundation of any business. Building your business on a solid foundation is extremely important. By threatening the instability of that foundation, MySpace may find itself in a position whereby the companies they want to attract have no reason to be there. A social network is, after all, not social if nobody’s at the party. Similarly, no business can survive without customers.

Socialbakers calls the results “surprising” and even “amazing” considering that Vine is so new – it was only just introduced to Android, having previously only been available to iPhone and iPad users.(The Socialbakers data is based only on iPhone and iPad engagement.) Now, Facebook isreportedly exploring video for Instagram.

In research released last month, Unruly Media shared some other findings about Vine (some of which may by now be obsolete given Vine’s growth trajectory, but interesting nonetheless). Based on data from more than 10 million Vines collected during a 1-month period, Unruly Media found that:

5 tweets per second contained a Vine link;

Weekends were the most popular time to share Vines, by a sizable margin;

Most Vine activity occurred between 10-11AM EDT; and

Branded content accounted for 4% of the top 100 Vines tracked, compared to only 1% of content in the Unruly Viral Video Chart Top 100 Most Shared Videos that was branded.

About the Data: The Socialbakers data is based on an analysis of more than 30,000 tweets containing YouTube and Vine links posted over a 1-month period by selected brand profiles. The time period was May 5-June 5, 2013.

Socialbakers’ formula for Twitter engagement rate is based on replies, retweets, and favorites. The formula is listed below:

Twitter Average Tweet ER = ((Replies + Retweets + Favorites on a given day / # of tweets made by profile on a given day) / Total Followers on a given day) x 100

5) OEM keynote presentation and series of Dealer Panel Discussions for YOU to Participate in!

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9) Highly engaging workshops with rich content that help you stay ahead of your local competition, and SELL MORE CARS!

10) DEALER NETWORKING ROUNDTABLES held each day, which allow you to have one-on-one time with industry professionals on particular topics of interest (Mobile, SEO, BDC, Reputation Management, and more).

Now is the time to act while the Early Bird rate is going on through July 4th. Registration rates will only go up after that time, so don’t wait!

Make sure you share these ten reasons with your team, and use them to help convince your boss to give you the “stamp of approval” to book your trip!

A Simplified Version of Adding Your Google Author Rank to Your Blog

Anyone who is not SEO savvy or a coder may encounter difficulty when wanting to add your Google Author Rank to your blog.

There are tons, and I mean TONS of articles out there that try to tell you how to add it in a difficult way and after sorting through it myself, I thought a simplified version of how-to add your Google Author Rank to your blog was necessary.

Firstly, you must know that you need to have a Google+ account prior to claiming a Google Author Rank as it will verify your blog and help it get seen more and allow you to be recognized as an author by also putting a face to the name by adding your associated picture.

As your blog should be setup as a Google+ Business page and your blog’s URL is inputted, you will see a button that reads “link website”. This is when it gets a little complicated; a code will then appear and tell you to add it to the Head of your blog, which is great, if you knew where that was.

Let’s be honest, most of us bloggers, blog to blog. We are writers, artists and right-brained. Asking us to touch our Editor section within our theme is like asking us to do math without a calculator. Since each theme on WordPress varies it makes it even more difficult to locate. On this blog for example, I use the Intrepidity Theme which is not as straight-forward as to where everything is as perhaps Genesis does but is a great theme nonetheless.

After much hoping and wishing and copying and pasting without messing up the code. I finally found that it verified my website once I posted it within the home.php section of the WordPress editor for my theme prior to the end code.

What My Page Code Looked Like:

a href=”Your Page Generated URL” rel=”publisher”>Google+</a>

After jumping for joy and seeing the green checkmark appear on my G+ page (not profile). I then went and added the + sign before my name and hyperlinking it with the URL to my G+ profile (not page) with the ending including real=author…I know sounds foreign right?

Here is what it should look like when hyperlinking first you add +Your Name and then hyperlink it with

Google+ Profile URL HEREposts?rel=author

The Code needed:

<a href=”Google+ Profile URL HEREposts?rel=author“>+Your Name</a

Once it is clicked on you should be directed to your Google Plus Profile. You are now able to use that code in any author box or bio no matter the site you are writing on. You can see exactly what I mean by looking at my author bio below.

[NOTE:It will take a few days before you will begin seeing your image next to your writings]

Millennial Car Buyers to OEM’s and Dealers:Respond When You’re Being Spoken… “About”

64% of 18-24 year old consumers want companies, including car dealerships and manufacturers to respond to them when they mention the company’s name or brands online…

This conclusion comes from the data contained within a new e-book that showcases and analyzes results from a survey by J.D. Power and Associates and NetBase. The Social Listening and Big Brother eBook by NetBase and J.D. Power and Associates is available for download by ADM Professional Community members using the link provided at the end of this article.

Similar to Millennials, even the older age groups mirror that “we speak, you respond” sentiment… This further showcases an ever increasing need for car companies and dealerships to monitor the social web for mentions of their name, or references to their makes and models of vehicles. As the age demographic segments of the survey results get older, you cannot help but notice that just half of the 55+ group agree with these same sentiments.

It is important and intriguing to note that while the survey results suggest that consumers want companies such as car dealerships and OEM manufacturers to respond to discussions about them online (generally referring to social media), separate results from the survey paint a more confusing picture…

An example of this confusion and possibly a double standard when it comes to online monitoring is that roughly 6 in 10 respondents aged 18-54 want companies to listen to what they say about them online (4 in 10 of the 55+ crowd). While at the same time, about half of the survey’s respondents think that consumers should be able to talk about companies online without those companies listening in. This desire for privacy increases for the 55+ age group, of which 59% do not want companies seeing what they post about them online.

But wait… There’s more (confusion) in these survey results!

Between half and two-thirds of respondents want companies to respond when they’re being discussed online, while the same survey reports that more than 6 in 10 also say that companies should onlyrespond to online comments made directly to them (i.e. on their Facebook page, tweeted to them, etc.) You should download the PDF file of the report and take a look… In my opinion, what we are seeing is the variance based on where and what types of social media these comments are being made that reference a car company, make or dealership by name.

In an attempt at trying to poke fun at their own report’s findings, the authors note that the takeaway for automotive marketers and others who handle social media strategy is that they should be “telepathic.” Perhaps “empathetic” would be a better choice of words and not so much in jest… The next-best advice given is for marketers to:

Automotive Social Marketers should go beyond listening

Try to understand what consumers are saying

Consider the conversation’s context

Deliver mutual value when engaging

Show how listening can be a relationship-building tool rather than an intrusion

Other Findings:

Despite holding all these varied opinions about social media privacy, less than three-quarters of respondents (ranging from 62% of 18-24-year olds to 72% of 45-54-year-olds) know that car companies or dealership employees might be listening to what they’re saying online.

Roughly 4 in 10 respondents aged 18-54 feel that dealerships and car companies listening to online conversations are intruding. That rises to 54% among the 55 and over demographic.

Attitudes regarding whether companies should monitor online conversations to improve products and services vary significantly among age groups, ranging from 40% agreement for the 18-24 set, to 57% for the 45-54 group, and back down to 37% for the 55+ set.

Slightly more respondents believe that a company should respond to them if they make a negative remark about the company in an online post than if they make a positive remark about a company in an online post.

About the Data: J.D. Power and Associates, in association with NetBase, conducted a survey in December 2012 of 1,062 U.S. consumers ages 18–55+.

In regards to the process around a dealership monitoring and then responding to online blogs, comments, posts and discussions where the dealership is brought up or mentioned, I started developing a process and work flow while launching the ADP Social Media Reputation Management Team in 2009 and 2010. The work flow process chart shown below is based on something I saw published by the US Military in regards to how the Air Force responds to online comments and blog posts.

When I left ADP and went to work for Tier10 Marketing at the beginning of 2011, we revised and upgraded the work flow planning for better results and more production efficiency. The chart below reflects the Tier10 Marketing version of what we recommended:

Getting Started with LinkedIn Advertising for Your Dealership

Most people working in management position at dealerships and dealer groups have figured out that LinkedIn is a remarkably effective tool for networking with business owners and auto industry professionals that may be a good fit for open positions at your dealership. But what about using LinkedIn for marketing your dealership’s new and used vehicles, service department, parts and accessories? More and more automotive marketers are turning to LinkedIn to promote their dealership’s products, services, and published content.

You and your car dealership have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realize. LinkedIn has a powerful advertising campaign creation and management platform. If you’re using Google Adwords or any PPC advertising to power your dealership’s presence on Facebook, Twitter and Google Search, consider adding LinkedIn to that list, too. If you’re new to the LinkedIn advertising app, you can reference thisADM blog post, which walks you through each of the app’s required steps to set up your dealership’s own user targeted LinkedIn advertising campaign.

I also want to thank the great social marketing professionals at Hubspot for the primary substance of this post which was originally published on the Hubspot Blog by Amanda Sibley. Hubspot also offers a highly informative eBook which provides a great resource for the how’s and why’s of advertising on LinkedIn. I recommend that all ADM Professionals download this eBook, print it out and keep as a useful reference document.

How To Set Up Your Dealership’s LinkedIn Ad Campaign

Step 1:Create a New Ad Campaign

You will want to choose a name for your ad campaign that ‘s unique and relates to the campaign you’re running, for easier identification if you start running multiple ad campaigns.

These are only visible internally, so the more informative the name is, the better. For example, if I was doing a test to determine what demographic targeting was the best for a particular vehicle model line, I may call one campaign:

“Ford Edge Ad Test-North America -24 to 48-female”

When I look at this name, I know exactly who I am targeting, without having to click into this campaign. A bad name for this campaign, however, would be:

“Ford Edge test 1”

By calling it “Test 1” I have no way of knowing who I am targeting by just looking at the name of the campaigns.

Step 2: Select Your Language

You can now choose what language you want your ad to be in. LinkedIn will not translate your ad into other languages, but it can be written in any of the languages LinkedIn supports, including Spanish, French, and German.

Step 3: Choose Your Media Type

Next, choose between LinkedIn’s two media types, which include a basic text ad, and a video ad. Keep in mind videos must be 30 seconds or less.

Step 4:Write Your Ad Copy

Now you’re ready to start writing the copy for your ad! First, decide where you want people to be directed after clicking on your ad. You can send people to a specific external web page, such as a landing page for an offer on your dealership’s website, or you can send them to a page on LinkedIn about your dealership, such as your business page or a group discussion about your dealership, specific models or events.

Ad Headline: The headline of your ad cannot be more than 25 characters.

Ad Body: The body of a LinkedIn ad can be up to 75 characters long. The copy of your ad should be relevant both to the person viewing the ad, and the offer or page to which you’re sending them. For best results, create a different ad for each buyer persona you have, and tweak the copy accordingly. For example, when promoting a book to college professors, putting the words “College Professor’s Guide to …” may generate a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) than generic, untargeted copy. I mean, that copy certainly wouldn’t perform as well if it was viewed by elementary school teachers, right?

Call-to-Action (CTA): Having an actionable CTA within your ad copy will also help you improve your ad’s clickthrough rate. Tell people to “Download your ebook now!” or “Click now for free samples!” instead of writing compelling ad copy (great!) devoid of actionable copy that tells the reader what to do next (not so great).

Value: Incorporate your value proposition into your ad copy, making people more likely to click on your offer. If you tell them, “20% off your first purchase,” or “Clearance sale ends today, shop now!” you’re letting people know what specifically they can gain from clicking on your ad right now.

Don’t be afraid to test our your ad copy, either. You can create up to 15 variations of your ad in each campaign, and all variations of your ads within one campaign will be seen by the same people. These variations allow you to test different images and copy within your ads to find what works best for your audience.

Step 5: Target Your Ad

Targeting who sees your ad to a very specific and relevant group of LinkedIn users can help increase conversions — more relevant, more clicks. LinkedIn lets you target by location, company, job title, school, skills, group, gender, and age.

Location: You must select as least one location for your ads. Depending on your dealership’s franchises, more specific targeting may be helpful. You can select a location as broad as North America, and as specific as the San Francisco Bay Area. So if you’re trying to grow used vehicle sales in Hartford Connecticut, showing your ad to people in Los Angeles, California would be a waste of money. You can also take advantage of this targeting option to conquest sales outside of your traditional markets close to the dealership. You can also tailor your ad copy to specific locations. For instance, Ford dealerships may do well advertising specialty vehicles such as a Shelby GT500 Cobra Mustang to the entire Northeastern part of the United States, but should create ads that seek to sell the more commonly available Fusion to LinkedIn users in their local metro market.

Company: If your target audience works at a specific company, you’re able to target them directly — even by name. You don’t need to have specific names in mind, though; LinkedIn allows you to also target companies based on categories, like Legal, Non-Profit, or Finance.

Job Title: If your model line being promoted or service department offers are best for Presidents, VP’s, General Managers and CFOs, targeting only people that have “CFO”, “President”, etc. in their title will increase your conversions, and ultimately save money for your advertising budget. You can choose specific job titles, or chose from job functions and seniority. From the CEO of manufacturing companies, to the entry level associates at an accounting firm, you can target a specific group of people for your LinkedIn ads.

School: If you are looking to target people who have a particular educational background, you can target your ads based on schools. If you know a lot of your prospects and customers come from a certain school, try reaching out to them through LinkedIn ads.

Skills: Your target audience may have a certain skill set — email marketing, financial planning, risk management — think about what your target audience is good at, and try targeting people on LinkedIn with similar skills.

Group: One of LinkedIn’s best attributes is the groups that like-minded professionals join to discuss industry trends and topics. If your audience is very vocal on a topic, or you’re trying to gain thought leadership in a certain area, this advertising type may be a good option for you.

Step 6: Choose Your Payment Method

After selecting your targeting options, you can set up the payment method that works best for you. The two options you have for any pay-per-click advertising are 1) cost per click (CPC), or 2) pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM). If you pay per click, you will be charged each time someone clicks on your ad. LinkedIn will suggest a bid range depending on your budget and the competition for your ads; the more advertisers bidding on a similar campaign, the higher your bid will need to be. This bid is the maximum you will be charged. If the current rate is lower than your max bid, you will only be charged the current rate. If you choose to pay per thousand impressions, you will be charged a certain amount each time your ad is shown to one thousand people on LinkedIn.

Deciding what form of payment to use and the best maximum bid can be tricky. When deciding between CPC and CPM, think first about your end goal. Are you trying to get as many people as possible to see your ad to help with, say, a branding campaign? If so, CPM may be the way to go. If you’re trying to get more people to click on your ads to drive traffic to your website, or generate new leads, CPC may be better for you.

When thinking about an optimal maximum bid, some trial and error is needed. LinkedIn will give you a suggested bid, which is a good place to start. Then, think about when your audience is most likely online. You may want to bid higher during this time to be sure that your ads are the ones being seen. There are also certain times of day, and days of the week, that have a higher average bid based on usage and industry. Play around with your bids and see when you get the most return for your dollars spent.

Step 7: Set a Daily Budget

Set a daily budget for what works best for your company’s marketing budget. Before putting a lot of money into one campaign, first test out the success of each campaign and ad variation — you don’t want to put $1,000 into an ad that ends up not resonating with your target audience.

Let’s say you’re the VP of Marketing at floral shop. You assume the majority of your target market is brides, so you direct your ads on LinkedIn to bridal groups. After spending thousands of dollars, you only generated 10% of the leads you were hoping for. After doing some research, you found that the people near your store and on LinkedIn are actually looking for flowers for corporate events. Wouldn’t it have been nice to know that before spending a large amount of your budget on LinkedIn ads?

LinkedIn ads can be really successful for targeting niche markets. Because of their extensive targeting opportunities, almost any industry can find success on LinkedIn. Don’t be afraird to test things out. If something is going well, put a larger budget toward it, and watch the leads come in!

Step 8: Decide on Lead Collection

LinkedIn now provides you with the option to collect leads on your behalf. This new feature allows people to ask for more information or to be contacted by your company via a checkbox at the end of your ad. You will be notified by email when someone has asked for more information, allowing you to promptly respond and hopefully turn those leads into customers. Keep in mind, however, that the only way you can contact them is via LinkedIn InMail; you will not receive an email address or phone number with which to contact this person.

Finally, you can choose if you want your campaign to be shown continuously, or until a certain date.

LinkedIn Ad Reporting

Now you’re ready to start your first LinkedIn ad campaign! You can track your progress in the LinkedIn ads platform home screen. Here you will be able to see a graph mapping your clicks, spend, CTR, and more over set periods of time. You can also see statistics and average CPC for each campaign to make educated decisions as to how to optimize each campaign. For all PPC ads, the CTR will be a very small number. On LinkedIn, a good benchmark for a CTR is around .03% or higher.

If you have campaigns that are under-performing, there are several things you can do to optimize them. First, click into the campaign you want to look at so you can drill down into data on only one campaign. All ad variations of this campaign will appear, with separate data.

Look at the CTR of each ad. Is one variation performing better than another? If so, you may want to pause the less successful campaign. LinkedIn will begin to show your less successful campaigns less frequently, so putting more resources into your most successful ad variations and campaigns will help you reach your marketing goals.

Post-Click Reporting

Now that you have LinkedIn ads running that people are clicking on, it’s time to determine whether they’re actually driving qualified traffic to your website. That isn’t something LinkedIn can tell you — you need to do some closed-loop reporting on these campaigns to see who this traffic really “is.” After someone clicks on your ad and lands on your site’s web page, put the content you are offering behind a form. On this form, ask people important questions that help you qualify them as a good lead or not. This lead capture form should be connected to your customer relationship management (CRM) software so that once the lead’s information is in your CRM, your sales team can act upon these leads, and hopefully turn them into customers!

After launching several ad campaigns on LinkedIn, look at the landing page form data in your CRM. Is the traffic to your website generated by LinkedIn ads qualified? Is it generating customers? If not, you may want to optimize your campaigns. For instance, if your LinkedIn ads are targeting people in companies sized 1-10, but you find that the majority of the closed deals in your company are from leads with company sized 100-200, stop targeting those smaller companies on LinkedIn! Because of awesome targeting capabilities on LinkedIn, you can target companies that have 100-200 employees, which may increase the number of closed sales from your LinkedIn ads campaign.

Car Dealers: Social Media Matters When Seeking Your Competitive Advantage in Local Markets

In 2012, more than 1.4 billion people around the world used social networks, up 19% from 2011. But although the worldwide social network audience is enormous, it is by no means unified. Within the North American automotive marketing landscape social media based advertising continues to mature and develop capabilities that are simply unavailable in other media channels. As social networking giants such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and others grow and develop increased business engagement models, their ability to attract marketing and advertising investments from the automotive industry grows.

The chart shown below shows five years of social media based advertising spend with fairly steady growth. I predict a faster rate of growth going into 2014 as the targeting, messaging and creative engagement models provided by social networks continue rapid development and increased effectiveness in achieving automotive marketing objectives.

US Online Social Network Advertising Spend from 2008 to 2013*:

$1.175 billion (2008)

$1.295billion(2009)

$1.335 billion (2010)

$1.420 billion (2011)

$1.515 billion (2012)

$1.640 billion (2013)

Social Network Advertising Spend increases from another perspective*:

*Data source: eMarketer

ADM Professional Community members have access to all the data and insights we publish about social media. You can learn more about social network usage around the world below, but you can learn a lot more by visiting the ADM Professional Community daily. Complete the “Sign Up” form on the upper right of every ADM page to submit a membership application and start the conversation with experienced automotive marketers and people selling more cars using strategies and their tactics within the social media universe.

Usage patterns are highly developed and predictable in some regions, and unstable and changing rapidly in others. And while many people use Facebook, not all social network users do. Facebook has shown many users how to get their most satisfying results from time spent online, this has driven an increased familiarity with online social media in general, and a cottage industry of social networks specializing in specific subject matters. Homegrown social networks, especially those seeking consumers, enthusiasts and influencers in automotive niches will play a larger role over time in most major markets in both the USA and Canada.

Countries such as India and Indonesia are rapidly becoming major usage centers for social networking, particularly via mobile phones, and will each see their user bases grow more than 50% in 2012. This phenomenon, combined with Facebook’s staggering growth in the region, mean that in 2012, the Asia-Pacific region will, for the first time, be home to more Facebook users than North America is. As North American automotive consumers have become more accustomed and skilled at using social networks via their introduction through Facebook, many of them have ventured outside of the social media behemoth to participate in User Generated Content (UGC) sites, specialized blogs and forums, as well as other networks.

In more mature markets like the USA and Canada, automotive marketers are looking to use the social media presences they have already established to deliver relevant content to fans. Social networks are making it easier for businesses, especially car dealers to broadcast changing incentives and promotional offers that create the deals which drive both sales and service recommendations across a wider network of users in real time with improved location and mobile targeting.

With Facebook’s New Ads Manager and the growing maturation of the platform comes an increasing effectiveness for their paid advertising models.

This in turn enables car dealers to leverage user profile based targeting that delivers the right message to the right automotive consumer at the exact right time. More and more North American car dealers are using the growing platform maturity and advertiser responsiveness at Facebook for a competitive advantage over their neighboring dealership competition which has ignored Facebook’s emerging capabilities.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that Facebook (and social media in general) is a communication tool. It’s a way for businesses to connect with customers and a safe venue through which customers and potential customers can interact with your business.

With that said, let’s look at the other two primary functions of Facebook: marketing and branding. Both are similar. Both are categories that can mean different things to different people and businesses. While it’s definitely possible to do both well on Facebook at the same time, the safer and less time-intensive strategy would be to pick one or the other as the primary goal (outside of communication, of course).

Here are the two basic options. There will be those who will say that it’s being oversimplified, but this isn’t a tutorial. It’s a way to distinguish between the two so that a business can make an intelligent decision about which mindset to take in their efforts. Once the mindset is established, the strategies can form.

Facebook for Branding

This is becoming the more common practice among businesses because it is more open in form and more singular in goal. More importantly, using Facebook as a marketing tool is considered by many to be harder (depending on your business type, of course). Many, particularly those who are engaged with individual customers on a daily basis such as car dealers and realtors will opt for this approach because it gives them the freedom to simply be entertaining or informative without having to put the time into crafting an appropriate marketing strategy.

It’s the easy road, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any less rewarding.

Using Facebook for branding is all about getting your name, logo, and general message out there. The general message is often abstract – it’s not talking about a sale or a particular product but rather trying to convey a company attitude with the message.

This strategy can use popular images, interesting (and sharable) facts, or funny concepts to will encourage liking and sharing. While some take the road of using ideas that are completely off topic, I’m a firm believer that it’s possible to stay focused on either the local area, the industry, or both with every post. In other words, a car dealer shouldn’t be posting pictures of cats. They should be posting pictures of cars, videos of cars, and images or discussions about the local area.

The branding message is easier to spread because it doesn’t involve marketing. There’s no goal of direct conversions or clicks to the website. It’s all about getting the brand out there as much as possible.

The downside, of course, is in proving ROI. Without direct marketing applied to the messages, it’s a leap of faith that by getting interaction and engagement around content that does not lead directly to a lead or a sale but that keeps the name and logo of the business in mind, that there are intangible benefits that are happening.

Facebook for Marketing

Unlike using Facebook for branding, the marketing strategy is trickier. It’s easier to mess up. There’s a risk of actually doing damage to the Facebook account by being too “spammy” with the posts. Those who are not ready to take a little heat on their path to get more conversions should not even go down this road.

However, if your goal is to achieve demonstrable ROI and take what you can today in a concrete manner, this is the right approach. It will rely on Facebook ads. There’s no way around it – unless you’re marketing something that resonates while also being productive such as a funny T-Shirt company, you’re very unlikely to get away with a hardcore marketing message without the use of ads.

Thankfully, Facebook ads are cheap.

Using a marketing strategy on Facebook does not mean that it’s all business. While some I have spoken to on the subject (including a VP at Facebook) have said that businesses can find success by only posting once or twice a week and promoting those marketing posts, I’ve found that a mix of interesting or entertaining content with the marketing messages can be beneficial.

People aren’t going to Facebook to see marketing messages, so yours has to be truly valuable. It’s not about putting up a picture of a car and calling that marketing. It’s about generating messages that they can only get through Facebook. For example, having Facebook-only sales events can be effective with next to zero risk. If people come to the store as a result, awesome! If they do not, then the expenditure was minimal. If they aren’t successful, you shouldn’t give up. You simply need to tweak the message, adjust the advertising, or go through a series of “fun” posts to set up the marketing posts properly.

Don’t Forget Communicating

Regardless of which path you choose, remember the number one rule: Facebook (and social media in general) is about communication. It’s about talking to your customers and having them talk to you. It’s about giving them a venue through which you can be completely open about your business and hold public conversations with unsatisfied customers as well as the happy ones.

Which way fits best with your business? That’s the only real question you need to ask to get started down the right path.